SHOCKING THE HEWSTONS
As the winter wore on the weather in New York offered daily a more
violent and odious comparison to the blue seas and balmy airs of
California. The cold, sullen skies, dull, damp days and piercing winds
set more than one dreaming of sunshine and summer, and among the many
was Alice Wilstead.
She was pondering thus, looking about her with surprise, one especially
snowy, dreary winter afternoon as she took her way to Mrs. Hewston's. It
was one of those thoroughly depressing days when nothing could really
raise one's spirits but the inspiring glow of firelight. Mrs. Wilstead
certainly looked as if she needed that and all positively cheering if
not inebriating things as she entered Mrs. Hewston's drawing-room. Her
piquant dark face was meant for smiles and gaiety, all of her features
apparently designed to that end, for the corners of her mouth, the tip
of her nose, the slant of her eyes, all inclined upward. It is a tragedy
when a person of such countenance is in an introspective or melancholy
mood. Sober meditations have an aging and blighting effect on the
features of those born to look out upon the world with an arch and
piquant interest.
Isabel Hewston roused herself a little reluctantly. She was sitting
alone most comfortably in a delightfully easy chair, she had on a
becoming and loose Paris tea-gown. She had resolutely put behind her the
haunting specter of increasing flesh, had taken an afternoon off from
the persistent and continued battle she had been forced to wage with it,
and now lay, a box of sweets on the table beside her, a new novel in her
hand, enjoying to the full her temporary respite. It is to her credit
that she put aside her book at the most nerve-tingling paragraph without
a sigh.
"Dear Alice," she exclaimed, lifting herself on one elbow, "you have a
bad-news look all over you, the very rustle of your skirt proclaims it.
What can be the matter?"
"Give me some tea," said Mrs. Wilstead gloomily, "and let me sit down
and rest." She slowly removed her furs. "My dear Isabel, do you mean to
say you do not know?"
"Know what?" asked Mrs. Hewston in bewilderment, ringing and
mechanically ordering tea. "How could I possibly know anything after
just getting off the steamer this morning? What has happened? You
haven't been speculating, Alice, and losing all your money?"
Mrs. Wilstead hastily disclaimed any such unforgivable crime and
inconsolable grief as losing money. "Then really you have not heard,"
she exclaimed. "Isabel, I am more worried than I can say. Lemon, please.
It is stupid of you, Isabel, never to get into your head the fact that I
couldn't be guilty of taking cream. To think of such a thing occurring!
I had hoped that with Eugene Gresham out of the way, having the decency
to go to England and France, and the papers full of his spectacular
stunts, that all talk would cease and that when Cresswell Hepworth came
back from that western trip that everything would be all right."
"What are you talking about?" asked Isabel Hewston with the calmness of
despair. "If it isn't too much trouble, would you mind making a few
explanations? Just one might suffice."
"It is that absurd, undisciplined Perdita Hepworth. She has had her head
completely turned by the success of Maud Carmine and now she and Maud
have gone into business together."
"Into business?" Mrs. Hewston made a tremendous clatter among the
tea-cups. "Business! What can you mean? Cresswell has not failed?"
"Good heavens, no! But that is the reason he has been so long in the
West. At least that is what every one says. Dita and Maud informed him
of this scheme, and he, of course, expressed his opinion of the whole
matter, refused to countenance it; but he couldn't do anything with such
a headstrong creature as Dita, and so he simply cleared out; went West
and has stayed there, while those two girls have gone stubbornly on and
carried out their plans."
"Business!" Isabel still rolled her eyes in dazed speculation. "But what
kind of business? What could they possibly do? Lamp-shades, menu-cards?
I'm sure I've always heard that Perdita didn't make such a brilliant
success when she tried that sort of thing before!"
"Menu-cards! Lamp-shades!" Alice laughed scornfully. "That's mere paper
dolls to this venture. This is a business of their own invention,
although Dita does take orders for house decoration also; but the main
purpose is dressing the wealthy, telling the plain little daughters of
the rich what to wear."
"For pity's sake!" gasped Isabel. "What sort of place is it, beauty
parlors or dressmaking?"
"Oh, dear me, neither! Nothing so commonplace. They have taken a house
just on the Avenue (they say it is a dream within), and you have to
write for an appointment, and then if they will consider you at all they
write back and set a time, and you go exactly as if you were calling,
you know, and you are received by either Maud or Dita or both. Then you
come again whenever they tell you, and all the time Dita is studying you
just as a portrait painter would. Finally, when she feels that she has
you thoroughly in mind, and is quite decided about the way you shall be
clothed, she has designs made for you of hats and gowns, little water
colors, you know, and sends you to her dressmaker. She also has your
maid come and dress your hair before her, according to her directions.
And it costs you!" Alice Wilstead pursed her mouth and lifted her brows,
"It costs you! Oh, like the dickens!"
"Who is that?" said Mrs. Hewston turning.
"Only me," Wallace Martin replied modestly and ungrammatically,
entering, as usual, unannounced, a privileged friend of the family, and
greeting the two women with his usual barking cheerfulness.
"I just walked up home with that pretty little Lolita Withers, and, as
you were only a block or two farther, I came on here."
The two women gazed at each other with a long, wondering stare. "Lolita
Withers!" they exclaimed simultaneously. "Pretty!" Nothing could have
been more eloquent than their tones.
"My dear Wallace," said Mrs. Hewston, finding her voice, "is this some
new joke? Are you quite sane?"
"He means it for a joke," said Mrs. Wilstead, who had been peering at
him curiously. "He is going in for eccentricity, or else the success of
his play has gone to his head."
"Not a bit of it," replied Martin with unmoved smiles. "Lolita Withers
is at present an obviously pretty girl. Any one would so consider her."
"Obviously pretty." Mrs. Wilstead had found her tongue by this time, and
acrid and scoffing it proved. "That skinny, ineffective little Lolita
Withers! Dull-eyed, anaemic, with stooping shoulders and wispy light
hair."
"She looks like a dream of spring," said Wallace, helping himself
lavishly to tea and cakes. "A sort of an evanescent beauty. Truly, yes,"
he affirmed, "she's been to Maud Carmine and Perdita Hepworth." He gave
a great burst of laughter.
"If they can make any one believe that Lolita Withers is pretty," said
Mrs. Hewston dazedly, "they are indeed benefactors of the race."
"Perdita Hepworth is a genius, a wizard. I always said so." Alice
announced this with a sort of triumphant conviction. "She could make
Aaron's rod blossom like the rose."
"But where did they get the money?" Mrs. Hewston's mind turned always to
practical things. "If Dita really quarreled with Cress, would he--?"
"Maud's money." Martin spoke with the assurance of one possessing
authoritative knowledge. "Cresswell Hepworth! Oh, no, he went off in a
terrible huff because the girls laid their plans before him and told him
what they were going to do. At least," he amended, "that is the idea I
got from the little that Maud has occasionally told me. Yes, it's Maud's
money; but they'll lose nothing, plucky girls! Double and treble it,
more likely. They've already had an overwhelming success."
"I'm going to them," cried Isabel Hewston excitedly. "If they are so
wonderful they ought to be able to make me look slender without my
having to go to all the bother of being really slender."
"You'll have to stand in line then; that old Mrs. Peter Huff is jumping
for joy and calling down blessings on their heads because they've
literally transformed her three ugly daughters. Maud said they were
splendid material, and Dita did wonders with them. The old lady hopes to
get them married off now."
"Alice! When can we go to them?" Mrs. Hewston's voice was trembling with
excitement.
"I can't go now." There was a distinct fall of disappointment in Alice
Wilstead's voice. "The truth is, I'm going to California with the
Warrens the first of next week. Why, what is that?"
There was a sound of some one wheezing, puffing, muttering without the
door, and then the curtain was violently jerked aside and Mr. Hewston
entered. His hair stood up white and ruffled about his head, his face
was of a much livelier crimson than usual, and he was puffing out his
lips as if blowing fire and smoke from his mouth. In one hand he was
tightly clasping a newspaper.
"Willoughby! My dear!" his wife rose in consternation. "What is it, what
has happened?"
For answer Mr. Hewston spread open the paper and struck it with his
hand. "Read that," he cried tragically, "read that! My poor friend,
driven from his home by the vagaries of a mad, irresponsible girl, his
life ruined by the foolish, frivolous creature he married! Turned from
his home, he was driven to this."
Wallace had seized the paper, and the two women hung over his shoulder
to scan the sheet before them.
What met their eyes were huge, black head-lines above and below the
pictures of Cresswell Hepworth and a very pretty woman.
The head-lines announced that the two had been in an accident in Mr.
Hepworth's motor-car at Santa Barbara. Both were thrown out, but neither
sustained any serious injuries. The article went on to say that Mr.
Hepworth had, during his stay in the West, evinced great interest in the
career of this beautiful and gifted young woman, an actress of
reputation in her part of the world, but unknown in the East. It was
understood, however, that she was to play a New York engagement during
the coming spring, making her first bow to a metropolitan audience as
Rosalind in a superb stage presentation of _As You Like It_. There was
no question of the beauty of the mounting of this famous comedy, nor the
strength of the company with which the young star would be surrounded,
as the capital behind her was practically unlimited.